The Impact of U.S.-China Tensions on People Mobility

Using novel international aviation data, we assess the impact of U.S.-China tensions on people inflows from China to the U.S. through the lens of monthly air passenger traffic data. We find that, relative to other source countries in the period between 2017 and 2019, air passenger flows from China into the U.S. declined 6%. When differentiated by geographical locations, relative to other U.S. airports, U.S. airports near universities with a significant presence of Chinese students are found to have experienced a more than 10% drop annually in passengers originating from China. A further investigation reveals that the decline in people inflows is driven mainly by the loss of passenger arrivals in August and is consistently steeper than the decrease for airports near tourist destinations during the same period. These findings offer updated evidence on the detrimental effect a hostile political climate could have on international people mobility between two major scientific powers.